Village Lends New Lease To Old Address Old Hyde Park In Tampa Finally Winning Acceptance

Take the quaint charm of downtown Winter Park, add a bit of Palm Beach smugness, surround it with high-priced townhouses, then plant it in the heart of one of Tampa's oldest, trendiest neighborhoods.

Create a civilized, urban oasis, the kind of place suburbanites visit for reassurance. A little Winter Park with a Tampa twist.

Give it a quaint name, too: Old Hyde Park Village.

That's what the developer, Amlea Inc. of Toronto, calls the $90 million project that is coming to life two miles west of downtown Tampa.

The neighbors who have fought it for six years, though, have another name for what is growing in their midst. ''We call it 'The Amleaville Horror,' '' said Lynn Whitelaw, the soft-spoken librarian who led the neighborhood's most strident opposition to the project.

Turning the heart of this quiet neighborhood into a new kind of upscale Florida village was neither obvious nor simple.

Old Hyde Park Village is not what the company first said it would be and it is still not what many in the neighborhood want. But two years after it was supposed to be finished, the project's first phase finally is taking shape.

A new chain-operated restaurant-bar, J. B. Winberie, has been drawing lots of customers since it opened March 17. Jacobson's, anchor tenant in the project's 185,000 square-foot retail section, opened March 21 to a large, curious crowd. A model townhouse opened the same day; three have since been sold.

By summer's end, most of the 45 stores should be filled with such tenants as Ralph Lauren, Crabtree and Evelyn, Larry's Ice Cream and Au Courant (an upscale, Palm Beach optician). By fall, people should be living in the first 38 of the 220 townhouses Amlea said it plans to build on the 12 1/2-acre site. About half the townhouses are above the shops and restaurants. The rest act as buffers, one of the many concessions Amlea made to the surrounding residents. The entire project, which will take several years to complete, revolves around a landscaped square, complete with fountain and clock tower.

The project, first announced in July 1979, has gone through several transformations. It has been a difficult six years for both the developer and the neighborhood.

First there was an 18-month fight with city hall, a turbulent period that divided the neighborhood and cost Amlea thousands of dollars. Design problems led to further delays. Then the nationwide recession in 1982 brought economic woes.

Throughout the off-and-on construction, neighbors complained of noise and dust and the constant interruptions of their daily routines.

Now quiet seems to have returned to the narrow, tree-lined streets. The pile-drivers are gone. The wrought-iron fountain in the square is flowing. The first strands of Confederate jasmine are crawling up the face of the two 315- space parking garages.

The neighborhood opposition, if not tamed, at least is quiet.

If pressed, Whitelaw even expresses a grudging like for the project. ''When it's all finished, it's going to be wonderful,'' said Whitelaw, who lives with his wife and 20-month-old daughter a block from the square.

Like many others in the Hyde Park neighborhood, which took root in the 1890s and recently was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, Whitelaw bought his one-story stucco house when it was not fashionable to live near downtown. Much of the housing had deteriorated. The house he bought for $26,000 nine years ago is, by Whitelaw's estimate, now worth about $120,000.

Property values have risen similarly throughout the neighborhood, and Amlea officials have taken at least partial credit for that.

Others aren't so sure. ''I don't think Amlea necessarily has ever made prices escalate,'' said Bob Glaser, a broker-associate with Smith and Associates, a real estate company that handles a lot of sales in south Tampa. In Glaser's view, the rise in prices was ''a natural evolution'' linked to Hyde Park's assets: schools within walking distance; downtown two miles away; bordered by picturesque Bayshore Boulevard. Young families moved in and began renovating the old frame bungalows and colonial-revival houses that characterize the area.

Glaser sees good things in the village project, though. He recently bought a house one block away. If Amlea's townhouses sell -- they're priced at $135,000 to $199,500 -- and the shopping area becomes a hot spot for young professionals to dispose of their disposable income, Glaser figures he can't lose. ''It's a lovely scenario,'' he said.